


watch this eat me alive

by quackingfish



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Nogitsune
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24458284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quackingfish/pseuds/quackingfish
Summary: He’s staring out into the sunrise-warm sky when Derek finds him, one leg curled up to his chest, the other swinging idly over the edge of the building.Before, Stiles would’ve turned, acknowledged him with a joke or a smirk orsomething, but he can’t bring himself to look away from the faded yellow-blue in the distance.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 49





	watch this eat me alive

**Author's Note:**

> you ever just start writing to stop yourself from napping, and then all of a sudden it's 6 hours later, and you've written 3.5k words and also gone to tesco, and you have no idea what just happened? because i have no clue what happened, beyond that i have milk and this fic now, and i don't know what it is, but i kinda like it?
> 
> title from I Come Alive- The Used, for some reason?

He’s staring out into the sunrise-warm sky when Derek finds him, one leg curled up to his chest, the other swinging idly over the edge of the building. _Before_ , Stiles would’ve turned, acknowledged him with a joke or a smirk or _something_ , but he can’t bring himself to look away from the faded yellow-blue in the distance. 

He hears more than sees Derek settle down next to him, and after a long, long moment, glances over at him. He’s on the floor, his back pressed against the little ledge that Stiles has made his perch for the last- the last however the fuck many hours. Well. It’s Derek’s building, anyway, he has the right to come sit out here too, though Stiles doesn’t know why the hell he’d want to.

A bird sings cheerfully in the distance. 

“I’m not going to jump, if that’s what you’re here for.” His fingers start up their count, thumb to finger, one-two-three-four, over and over. “I’m not gonna make Scott lose both-” His throat clenches, and he continues on anyway, as if he’d managed to say her name, “-and me, not in the same week.”

There’s another long silence. Another bird joins the first.

“I know.” 

Stiles bites back a bitter laugh. That kind of sound is bad now, makes people flinch away from him, look at him like they’re not sure-

Well.

He sighs, and runs his hands down his face, digging them into his aching eyes. He’s not sure how much longer he’s going to be able to keep himself awake. Maybe if he trips himself face first into a panic attack he’ll buy himself a few more hours of consciousness. He swings his leg around, and catches Derek in the shoulder. 

“Shit, sorry.” He freezes, blinking too fast when Derek looks up at him. His hands are fluttering again, and he pushes them through his hair to try to still them. 

“Going to go get some sleep?” Derek’s eyebrow twitches, and he should be able to identify that look, has definitely seen it directed at him before, but there’s just… nothing. 

“Hah, no.” 

There’s a clang, a scrape, that’s probably just the coffee shop around the corner taking out the trash, but it’s enough like the noise steel makes when impacting concrete, and all he can feel is the way his sword had shuddered as it cut through a body, going clean through and stopping only when it hit a wall. 

Stiles jolts, and his hands are his own again, he’s wearing his old faded hoodie instead of bandages and a soldier’s uniform, and Derek’s hand is on his wrist. He blinks rapidly, shaking his head as if that will shake it away faster. 

“Stiles?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry.” Stiles shudders out a breath, thumbs tapping each finger, one-two-three-four. Still awake. “I’m gonna go. Sorry for- sorry.”

Derek’s hand lingers on his wrist for a long moment, but he doesn’t stop Stiles from turning and walking away, and Stiles doesn’t linger long enough for him to say anything in response.

He passes out for a few hours, squeezed in between the sink and the shower, knees curled to his chest. Scott shows up while he’s putting water on to boil, so he makes them both a cup of the fancy herbal tea that his dad had bought a couple of weeks ago on the off chance it would help with the nightmares.

They don’t say much, but once they’re finished drinking, Stiles stands, recognising the fidgety energy in Scott. He’s looking for something to do, something to distract him, make him feel useful, _something_.

So he asks Scott to help him take down the pictures and stats and notes stuck to his walls, and it’s satisfying, untangling and spooling up the red string, and Scott even talks him into putting everything into a box rather than just straight in the trash. Stiles never wants to look at all this shit again, but the research might come in useful, someday. If it does, he’s probably going to have to make someone else look through it all, rather than doing it himself. 

He’s balancing on his chair and tugging at scraps of tape when his eyes catch on a pair of tickets tacked to one of his pinboards, between photos of him and Scott at the beach.

“Dude, when did we go to Comicon?” Stiles frowns, reaching to take the tickets down. 

“What?” Scott is muffled, until he takes the scissors out of his mouth. “Two years ago? Man, has it really been that long?”

Stiles stares at him. “I… I don’t remember ever going. We couldn’t last year because the Jeep needed work, right?”

Scott steps towards him, one of his hands coming up to rest on Stiles’ shoulder. “Yeah, but we made it the year before that, right? That’s where you bought that one Spiderman shirt, remember?”

The thing is, he remembers the shirt, remembers how much it had cost, and when he pushes, he remembers him and Scott ducking out of the shitty sixth-period history they’d had two years ago to tumble into the Jeep early, but other than that- nothing.

Scott’s face is filled with concern, and _before_ , Stiles would’ve just forced a smile and shrugged it off, but he doesn’t trust his face to smile like himself anymore. So he lets out a shuddery breath, and meets Scott’s eyes. “I don’t remember.” He says, slowly, each word careful and clean. 

Scott’s eyes widen. “Shit, dude. Is there anything else you don’t remember?”

Stiles can’t stop the half-smile, this time. “Dude, if there was, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Oh, yeah.” There’s a pause, and then Scott’s hand tightens on his shoulder. “We could, I don’t know, run through the last few years while we finish up? Just to make sure?”

Stiles is so, so achingly glad he still has Scott. “Yeah, sure.”

It turns out Stiles is missing more memories. Small things, like the time Scott had nearly broken his ankle falling out a tree, the time they’d stayed up all night to go to the release of the last Harry Potter book, the time they’d had to chase a gang of pixies off the Preserve. Which was quietly fucking _terrifying_ , but not even the worst of it.

No, the worst of it is that Stiles had distractedly made a comment about being reminded of when he’d taken down a whole squad of guys with just a couple of glass bottles, a table, and an iron pipe. He’d been grinning idly, but Scott looked so _confused_ , and then, then Stiles realises. Those hadn’t been his hands. 

Stiles feels sick. Scott is sitting beside him on his bed, and Stiles can’t tear his eyes away from his own hands.

“Scott?” His voice is too shaky, so he takes a breath to steady himself. “Can you pull up some pictures of the uniforms they’d have worn at Oak Creek?” 

His hands are trembling. The memory was just as clear as any other, coloured by the same haze of adrenaline that coated a lot of his memories of the last year. He taps his fingers quickly, the same one-two-three-four, and then Scott was holding his phone in front of him, and _oh_. Oh _fuck_.

Stiles stops breathing. 

“Stiles?” Scott’s hand squeezes his shoulder again, and Stiles shudders. 

“Okay.” He feels lightheaded, like he’s phasing out of his body. And that’s bad, that’s fucking _terrible_ , so he stands up, tugging at his hair until the sparks of pain pull him back together. “Drive me to Deaton’s, call in- fuck, who’s free?” His chest hitches for a moment, flicking through names. His dad’s at work, Isaac’s probably with Chris Argent, and he can’t linger on that, and Lydia- he still hasn’t been able to face Lydia, and- “I don’t know, Derek? Someone?”

He tugs his door open, leaving his room like that’ll help him leave all this behind. He’s downstairs and halfway to the front door by the time Scott catches him, and halfway to a panic attack to boot. Scott tugs him into a hug, and Stiles can’t do anything but sag against him. _Fuck_.

Deaton doesn’t look even the slightest bit phased by Scott dragging Stiles through the door, and thankfully it’s still fairly early in the morning, so there’s only one person in the waiting room. Scott just pushes on through, guiding Stiles to sit in a steel chair against a wall while he talks to Deaton. Stiles doesn’t pay attention to what Scott’s saying, just keeps pressing his thumb to each of his fingers, one-two-three-four, over and over. 

After a whole lot of counting, Scott nudges him, and Stiles looks up, forcing himself to meet Deaton’s eyes. 

“I’ve been doing some reading, and this isn’t wholly unexpected. I suspect that when the Nogitsune was separated from you, it wasn’t a clean break. From the sounds of it, it got some of your memories, and you got some of its.” Deaton looks sympathetic, as usual, and Scott has the same worried expression he’s been wearing for the past several weeks. Possibly longer.

Stiles clenches his fists and steeles himself. “Are you sure that it’s gone? That it’s not just toying with me, still?”

“Dude, we saw it die-” Scott began, and Stiles couldn’t help but flinch. He’d been halfway delirious by the time Scott had managed to kill it, but seeing his face, twisted and cruel, crumbling to dust- that had made an impression. 

“It might be possible, but I doubt it. What Scott told me about the separation, the new body, the effects it had on you, the firefly in the box, all these are strong indicators that the Nogitsune is gone from you, Stiles.”

Stiles nods, and lets his head fall back against the wall. He feels something brewing in himself, a familiar bitterness. 

“And there’s no way to fix it, is there? Just another thing that’s gone forever.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Stiles clenches his fists, focusing on drawing a few shuddering breaths. Scott steps towards him, opening his mouth, but all of a sudden Stiles can’t be in there anymore. He jolts upright, brushing past Scott, keeping his arms stiff by his sides as he practically stalks out of Deaton’s office. He lets the back door slam behind him, and the noise of it feels _good_ to a small animal part of his brain.

_Fuck_ , he’s pretty sure he can’t remember his seventh birthday. His mom would’ve been there, he knows it, but there’s just- nothing. He whirls and kicks out at the dumpster by the door, before sagging against the solid brick wall. He’s gritting his teeth, trying to hold back a shout, when there’s a voice from a couple of feet away.

“Stiles?” 

His head snaps up, and there’s Derek, hands up like he’s approaching a wounded animal. Which, Stiles figures, with more than a touch of bitterness, he is. 

“I’m fine.” He snaps, pushing off from the wall but not going anywhere. There’s nowhere _to_ go.

Derek just raised an eyebrow.

“I _am_. I’m just normal pissed off, not possessed pissed off, so you can fuck off, all right?”

“You look like you’re going to punch something.”

“Yeah, probably.” Stiles flung his hands out, turning and heading in the direction of the forest. Maybe he could kick a tree, or something. 

At the sound of footsteps beside him, Stiles frowns and turns his head. Derek, still. Well, if he’s going to have a babysitter while he flails about in useless rage, at least it’s not Scott. It’d probably break the both of them if he yelled at Scott, and that seemed all too likely in that moment.

They reach the edge of the forest, and Stiles aims a kick at a fallen branch, letting out a half-shouted “ _Fuck_.”

“If you need to take out your anger on something, take it out on me, rather than innocent foliage.” 

Stiles whirls around and fixes a glare on Derek. “What, you wanna prove that you actually can take me, after that pitiful performance in your loft?” 

“I don’t know if you missed it, but I’m not exactly a great fighter, even when I’m not up against an ancient fox demon. I don’t want to prove anything, just wanted to offer. Hitting a person usually feels better than an inanimate object, in my experience.” 

“Fine.” Stiles hisses, before lunging forwards and shoving Derek. He’s still a solid wall of muscle, of course, but it pleases the small, angry part of himself in the pit of his stomach. 

After a while of punches and kicks and useless attempts at violence, some of which actually land with some success, here and there, Stiles feels somewhat better. Better enough to admit that Derek was right, to himself, at least. He drops to sit on the gnarled roots of a tree, panting.

“It took some of my memories. Good times with Scott, one of the last birthdays with my mom, countless other shit. I don’t know if there’s much more of me left for it to _take_ , at this point.”

His head falls into his hands, and he tries to steady his heart.

There’s a sound that he chooses to read as Derek settling down on the ground near him, and then Derek hums. “I don’t remember what my mom smells like anymore. It’s been too long. I’ll forget what Laura smelled like before long, too.”

Stiles manages a nod. “I’m not sure if mine actually smelled like chamomile, or if I’ve just made that up because she used to make it for me when I couldn’t sleep.”

There’s a long, long moment of quiet, long enough that a squirrel starts rustling somewhere nearby. 

“Thanks for-” Stiles gestures, in a way that he hopes says ‘letting me try to beat the shit out of you’. “I nearly screamed at Scott, yesterday, or two days ago, something, and he just looked so-” Stiles cuts himself off, twisting his hands together. There’s a scab on his thumb, and he picks at it, watching the blood well up.

“I know it’s just gonna take time, but it just feels so-”

“Insurmountable?” Derek murmurs, then bites his lip, looking like he didn’t mean to say anything.

“Yeah.” 

They sit there for a while, listening to the quiet noises of the forest around them. A little brown bird hops about, poking its beak in piles of dead leaves, before a car horn blares in the distance, and it scarpers. 

“I keep thinking I’ve found the worst bit, and then more hits me. The way Lydia screamed, all the blood, the nightmares, the way nobody looks at me the same anymore, if they even look at me at all. Allison’s-” His throat hitches, but he just stares out at the trees and pushes on, “Allison’s funeral is probably gonna be up there.”

“But one of the worst things- worse than the lack of sleep, the way I can’t trust myself anymore- when I twisted that sword in Scott, when I fed from his pain- that was _easily_ the best thing I’ve ever felt. Like I’d been starving for it, and finally had a gourmet buffet. How’m I supposed to live, knowing how good Scott’s _pain_ tastes?”

Stiles sighs, and regrets everything he’s ever done or said.

“You just do.” Derek’s voice is steady, unexpected. “It seems impossible, but life just keeps happening to you. It’s not about _easy_ , or _possible_ , it just happens. Your whole world gets destroyed, and it still moves on, moves into autumn, and starts selling pumpkin spice.” 

He manages a laugh at that, real, but still sounding hollow. “Thank god for overpriced coffee, huh?”

“None of it was your fault.”

Stiles’ hands twitch into fists. Too vulnerable, too soft, not safe, and he lashes out, without thinking. “Neither was the fire, but you still blame yourself, don’t you? And don’t give me any bullshit, I know all about Kate.”

Derek sighs, and Stiles glances at him. His jaw is tight, and Stiles regrets everything even harder.

“Yeah, okay.”

Stiles lets his foot knock against Derek’s, like a peace offering. “That’s why you stayed away when I- when it- was tied up in Scott’s house, isn’t it? You assumed I’d figured it out, and didn’t want that brought out in front of anyone? You were right, _god_ , it would’ve-” He cuts himself off, figuring that they both know what he means. 

The Nogitsune had flicked through all his memories and coldly worked out how best to hurt everyone he cared about, and now Stiles got to carry that knowledge, the roadmap of how to wreck his friends, his family. 

“That, and it was setting me on Argent at the time.” 

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Stiles sighs, bitter. And he knows, like he knows exactly what Scott will order from any takeout place in town, exactly what he’d- what _it_ would’ve said to Derek. Pull on the guilt of his family, on Kate, then move on to him being a shitty Alpha, to Erica, to Boyd. Laugh at the whole grumpy leather thing, at how that wouldn’t protect him. Probably lean on the respect and bone deep trust Stiles had for him at the same time, and tidy it up with a nice little bow by telling him that he’d never be able to keep the people he cares about safe. That the common denominator in the nightmare of loss that was Derek’s life was himself. 

Stiles feels sick.

He’s shaking, he notices, before tensing with a jolt when Derek starts speaking.

“I never thought it’d be true, let alone that I’d admit it, but me and Argent worked pretty well together.”

Stiles manages a shaky snort. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Dude knows his stuff. I’ll have to see if I can get a copy of his bestiary for you before he leaves town.”

Stiles’ mouth curls before he realises it. “That’d be nice, thanks.”

“No problem. It’s not like we’ll get a break, I figure, and you’re the best in the pack at piecing together clues.”

His heart clenches at that, the quiet, casual reassurance that he’s still pack, that they’re still in this together. It calms a fear that he hadn’t even realised he’d had, that the pack would pull away from him, now that they’d seen the darkest, worst parts of him. That they’d had them thrown in their faces by an evil demon wearing his skin, his face, his once-easy grin. 

Stiles shudders, and blinks, and Derek’s reaching an arm out to him. “Wolves need physical contact more than normal people, and from what I remember, that goes for human pack members too.” He offers, mouth twitching up in half a smile.

He lets out a noise halfway between a whine and a hum, and then shuffles across the forest floor, snapping twigs underneath him, until he can lean against Derek’s side, something inside him settling when his arm hooks across his back, hand curling around his ribcage.

He just breathes against him for a while, the warmth and the scent of him comforting even to his normal human senses. He thinks he would be able to hear Derek’s heartbeat if he moved closer, so he does.

“Derek?” He asks, after a while.

“Yeah?

Stiles takes a deep breath, taps his fingers through their one-two-three-four rhythm a few times, and then opens his mouth again. “If- if I get possessed by something, anything, again, will you put me down? I know Scott wouldn’t, I couldn’t ask that of him- but I don’t know if I could come back from this again. I’m barely confident I’ll be able to _this_ time, let alone- I’ve lost so much of myself to the Nogitsune, I don’t know if there’d be anything _left_. And that’s not even considering people dying because of me-”

Derek’s arm tightens around him, and Stiles falls silent. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I could make myself do it, kill you, even if there was none of you left, if it was just a monster in your body.”

Stiles whines, feeling a little bubble of panic rising in his throat.

“But I know what you mean. If the pack died, if I lost everything again- I wouldn’t be able to… And then there’s the worry of becoming like Peter, losing myself to the vengeance,”

“I don’t think you’d get that bad, but. Yeah.”

“So. I’ll make you a deal.” Stiles tipped his head up, resting it against Derek’s shoulder, watching him as he spoke. “If I get like that, you take care of it. You put me down. And if the Nogitsune, or anything else, takes you over again- I’ll do the same.”

Stiles lets out a heady breath. “Yeah, okay. I trust your call, I’m just. Afraid.”

“Yeah.”

They sit like that for a long, long time, watching branches sway and birds flit between the trees. The sun tracks across the sky, dogs bark in the distance, golden orange leaves drift to the ground. Life ticks on, regardless of everything.


End file.
